I've never game by INI LLC

I love games; as a testament to this, my games cabinet overflows with games of all sorts. Since I'm also a total sucker for anything that might lead to either increased intimacy or sex, I love the idea of the adult board game most of all. Unfortunately, most adult board games I’ve tried have fallen far short of the mark. Still, I was excited to give this one a shot.

I've Never... is based on the old drinking game of the same name. The bar version requires each player to come up with things they've never done (generally risqué) and each other player to take a drink if they have. It's a fun game, requiring absolutely no equipment, but it depends heavily on evenly matched players and continued imagination. Further, if you're the experimental sort, (and I am) you can be reduced to a puddle of drunk very quickly.

What the packaged version of the game offers that the no-tools-required pub game doesn't is immediate play, with a pre-balanced deck. Think of it as a referee in a box.

It seems obvious that this game is best suited to a large group of players so I knew that I should wait to play it until I had a room full of friends (or a room full of lovers, if I wanted to play the XXX version), but after checking my mail obsessively for three days, I just couldn't wait to get into it. Kids and roommate out of the house for the evening, my partner and I hunkered down in the living room with a selection of drinks.

We got drunk fast. Too fast. We learned that with only two players, the game moves really quickly. By the end, we found ourselves imagining and then assigning alternate consequences to another shot. This, while unplanned and unmentioned in the rules, offers endless opportunities for this game to delve into the realm of the "adult".

Interspersed with squares requiring everyone to take a shot or draw an "I've never" card are the squares requiring players to do things like spin in a circle 5 times (sounds like a great way to get sick) or turn a cartwheel (who has space for an adult to turn a cartwheel?) While at the beginning of the game, there was some self-consciousness, by the end, we were laughing too hard to care about feeling silly.

I’ve Never Game... is nicely produced and packaged and comes with ten blank cards, on which you can write you own "I've never" statements. When you get bored of even these, expansion packs are also available.

Like many adult games that allow for more than two players, this game was a bit tamer than I'd hoped, but it does offer a good building block for taking it further. The game play was simple and quite fun, and with a few tweaks to personalize, my partner and I had a great time playing it.